


Entwined Awareness

by Skeren



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Living Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6113947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madara's Fan was more aware of events than most would believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entwined Awareness

**Author's Note:**

> Written March 2014.
> 
> Accompanying illustration: [Goes to deviantart](http://skeren.deviantart.com/art/Gunbai-456655998).

It was just off the battlefield that it all began. The day was bright, and it was a pair of brothers who were involved. One was taller, older than the other, but the younger seemed to not mind this. No, he had a present for his older sibling, a weapon that he knew his brother had been looking at, but hadn't yet chosen to pick up. This weapon was a fan. 

The fan wasn't a woman's fan, delicately deadly in the way of a tessen. No. This fan was large, with a chain, and could in no way be hidden from the enemy. It was a weapon that could shield, direct chakra, and through all this look deceptively fragile. It looked like something that would easily rip, and that it would never stand up to any metal blade. That was wrong, of course, the craftsmanship had been much too careful, but those who hadn't seen a fight fought with one before? How would they know?

And this, perhaps, was why the younger even offered this weapon to the older, because he knew his brother had the sharp mind to know of the uses, the potential of such a weapon, and it was accepted. Of course, there was an element to this that wasn't noticed by either of the human brothers, but happened to be noticed by the fan itself. That element was the bite of blood that was pressed into the material of the handle when the weapon was taken in hand by its new master, from a small, barely noticed wound on one of the man's fingers.

It was enough to jolt the weapon to life, though perhaps jolt was incorrect, and the word should have been... unfurled. Yes. The fan unfurled, quiet and new, an untested weapon in the hands of someone who hadn't yet had a chance to learn what it could do. Suspect, yes, want to learn, definitely, but every weapon was different, and a weapon like this one?

A weapon like this one had the potential to be so very much more than the typical mundane kunai. Of course, weapons like this one existed in forms other than fans, but they were only as strong as their masters. So many swords, specially forged, went through bloodshed, got strong... and then... were destroyed, lost without ever gaining a name. A name, of course, wasn't required, but... but without one there was no being recreated, and if a weapon was lost... then it was simply lost. So a fan, something so delicate, getting a spirit? That was unique indeed.

More unique was the power behind it. When quality weapons broke in battle, one thing that so many of the humans, the shinobi that wielded them, seemed to not understand, was that if the spirit was broken, the weapon would crumble. Some understood. They were rare, and most often, they were not even conscious of it. He suspected that his human was one of these. When he became a he, he could not say, amid the heat of battle, perhaps, with his arms thrown wide as he defended against a sword that should have gotten through and yet didn't. That would make the most sense. It, gaining a gender that is, was very likely because of the reflexive flare of chakra from his wielder, strengthening him when another spirit might have done him harm, and letting him destroy the enemy instead. Fledgling, barely aware, weapons were the easiest to destroy that way, but with the power of his wielder behind him...

So very many fell as he aged, and he had pride in the power of the one who gave him life, personality, purpose. He learned and danced, destroyed and defended, and all this he learned from his Master, doing all he could to ruin those who would ever dare touch his Master. Destroying young spirits by the dozens would keep them from ever growing strong enough to be a contest in the face of him, to be more than his Master's power in any way. It was the best way, and he reveled in being able to do this, in being able to give his master something so important to him and his wars.

But his Madara was not the strongest, nor the only, shinobi to be aware of those like him, subconscious though it was. There were other battles, frequent battles, with one that carried two spirits, and he never felt that was fair. A man and woman in tandem, one reaching out to him even as the other reached out to Madara. The woman was the one he fought, the embodiment of her wielder's blade, laughing and playful when he was serious and protective. She only grew more so, coy even, the more they fought, brought together by the humans behind them. It was the man, her other half really, that was the distracting one, always attempting to touch his human, to make some sort of contact. It raised his hackles and made him fight all the harder, and he won. At least, he kept either spirit from touching the physical, from influencing anything that they weren't permitted.

It only lasted as long as the two humans were in enmity however, and he never quite knew what to do when that passed, an almost understanding brush of fingers always accompanying the non-weapon spirit as it moved past him, just enough out of sync beyond battle that he knew he couldn't do anything more than fuss. And then, for lack of a better word, the spirit flirted, curling in an almost docile way around his human, settling him in a way that he, a weapon of war, knew he was fully incapable of doing. When the jewelry's human, and he realized, only after months of fighting, of finally seeing them beyond that, that he was, in fact, jewelry, if special, very special, to have a spirit like a weapon would... But when the jewelry's human grew closer to his, it worried him, because his human, his Master, seemed to accept the attentions of that trinket, opening up to them in a way that he found quite upsetting.

The blade spirit often tried to placate him when this happened, and she was more than slightly fretful when he got rather... possessively frustrated when her human started putting the jewelry right on his human. His human who only had him, for all his weapon prowess and battle skill, now seemed rather pleased by the spirit wrought from someone else's essence and power. It was years of this he watched, and always, always, that spirit could touch him, tried to soothe and apologize to him as much as it soothed his human, and he couldn't stand it, stand either of the other spirits. Without wars to be fought he felt powerless around the pair, retreating more and more to meditating with his physical form, of waiting to be taken up by his master as he did his best to be patient and steady, because his Master had always needed him to be patient and steady. He would need him again, because peace was not a lasting thing, he'd learned that in the drum of his creation. He'd had that whispered to him by the boy who had given him to his Master, so he knew, and he waited. He made himself wait, as weapons had to learn lest they destroy themselves.

This turned out to be the right choice. One day, something changed. That something was heavy and dark, and long missed by him. It was a familiar feeling he'd started to forget, and it soothed him in a way he didn't know he'd ever need. The sword spirit, of course, was in distress, flitting here and there, clearly sensing that this was wrong, even as she tried not to get excited because there might finally be a fight again, they might finally be put back to their purpose! The jewelry spirit however... was, for once, withdrawn, more quiet than he ever had been.

He didn't get to watch it long, and soon, his Master swept them away, returning to places that weren't yet without the stain of blood on the grass.

But it was different, after that. His Master wasn't satisfied anymore, was restless in a new way, and it made him dig in his heels, to protect him with more intensity because it seemed that his Master desperately needed that now. He needed a protector, someone on his side as he fought the one who had tried to seduce him, to take his Master away from him. Human or not, his Master, Madara, was his, and it was unkind of another human to have hurt him. Hurt him and hurt him again even. 

So of course it was only after a long battle, harsh and violent, that that human hurt his Master all over again in a new and terrible way, then never returned, leaving he, a spirit that shouldn't be able to reach out and touch his Master in the physical plane at all, to keep him alive, giving back bits and pieces of the power that had been fed into him over all the years he'd been with him, weakening himself to let his Master do what he needed to do. He was just a weapon, he could grow strong again, but he could do nothing without his Master, as he was just a thing, and things were not able to wield themselves.

Even then, however, he could do little more than watch, wait, as years moved past them and his Master grew old, weakening further and further before his eyes as time slowly crushed him. And then, he died, ending himself with a strange sort of optimism, still blind to him, as it should be, but the boy... he ended up going with the boy, letting the new Uchiha strengthen him once again... though it wasn't the same. The boy knew nothing of how to touch the spirit of his weapon.

But still... he waited, he fought, and time passed again, in the spiral that brings things back to their beginnings. Timeless beings like him wait for those who left them behind to take them up once more, it was all they could do. Before he could see the one he so missed however... he met that spirit first. The Jewelry, the not quite battle spirit that had given his Master things and then snatched them away, playing with him as only toys could do, useless things that didn't understand bloodshed and sacrifice. And he was furious.

He fought that spirit, harder and with more intensity than he'd ever given the boy in battles before, because here was a spirit that had helped hurt his Master, his true Master, and while perhaps forever apologetic, it still was to blame. It needed to make up for what it had done. 

This, then, was when between one breath and the next, in another exchange of hands not unlike the one that had happened so very, very long ago, that he found himself in touch with a familiar power, even with the edge of ash and earth. A power that was his master. The boy, always the boy, never his Master, had found a way to get him back where he belonged. A weapon in his Master's hands, an extension of his power. And he was grateful to the child, for giving him that, just as he was for giving him a chance to pick and tear at that spirit who had so wronged his human. But now, he was where he belonged again.

And there, he would stay. This time, his Master would not fall, because his weapon would allow nothing less than victory.

As it should be.


End file.
